Lady Blog

my first job was at the age of six…I combed our house and found things my mom wouldn’t miss ,like thimbles, marbles, jumping jacks, used combs w/ missing teeth and then i would walk door to door and try to sell this ish. I never got a sale ,so i quickly found a new job at 7 years old. The grocery store needed someone to deliver their flyers every tuesday- 600 flyers were slipped under the door of 600 homes on the steep hilly neighborhoods of pittsburgh. I’d get out of school at 3:00 ,start my job at 3:30 and get home by 9:00 when it was already dark. One day I was chased by a rabid dog and i jumped up on a car and waited ( what seemed like hours) until someone came home from work to take care of the foaming at the mouth shiny toothed monster barking and growling at me. Another time I found a dead chipmunk- ripped apart by a cat I guessed- however steps away I say her little shivering baby chipmunk which i swooped up and was thrilled to take care of at home by feeding her milk with an eye dropper and tuck her in her little bed made of yarn. After three weeks,she seemed strong enough so i released her on the way to school and the little brat bit me!!!!!! After 2 years I decided i had enough of the paper route and gave the job to another eager lil pittsburgh kid . 2 weeks later the boy told me that his father went down to the grocery store to beat up the grocer for underpaying him. the job paid me 6$ - a penny a paper- but was actually supposed to pay 60 dollars ( 10 cents a paper) -the rest is fuzzy but i remember thinking how nice it would be to have a dad come to my defense.I dont remember even telling my mom about it as she enough trouble raising 3 little girls on welfare. I was such an independent enterprising girl . i quickly moved onto babysitting and at the age of seven..i managed to secure a steady job babysitting 2 kids, 4 and 5 years old who’s father was the neighborhood weed supplier. The girls bedroom had clotheslines way above their heads with weed drying out. it never occurred to me that i was too young for the job and i thrived in my ability to be trusted with such responsibility and this guy paid me a decent wage. Looking back, I see how driven i was in search for security as a latch door kid - i was taught early by my mom- you’ve got to go out and make it on your own. My mom married a military man when I was 12 and i no longer felt the need for a job until the age of 15, when i got a job at a bakery and gave away a lot of baked goods to all my stoner friends who came in as it was a weekend job. next , i was a waitress and waited on Jim and tammy faye- ( that’s a hilarious story I’ll save for later) by 16, I lied and got a job at a “restaurant” named adams. They asked me if i was 18 ( i lied ) and told me this was a private business man’s club and my job was to be the host and check for their membership cards. I remember all the waitresses looked like farrah fawcett , ,didn’t wear bras but burgundy spandex onsies so their nipples always looked hard as the air conditioning was turned way up. the girls also always called me ” babe” . I should have known it was a whorehouse as it was the restaurant /bar attached to a hotel and the name of the place was called “adams”. I was also told that if any black men wanted to join- let them fill out an application and then throw it in the trash. well…….little did they know my mom raised me better , and by being a civil rights worker, she taught me at a young age what was right and what was wrong. Approx a month later as “Adams” was slowly fillingbup with every bourgoui black businessman in town , I was fired. I knew I had completed my job and felt very proud of my work ethics.Ha! To be continued……Lady Miss Kier